Original Title: "La mémoire et la mer"
Year: 1970, 1994 (Léotard's version)
The tide, I have it in the heart
Which comes in me again like a sign
I die of my little sister
Of my child and of my swan
A boat it depends on how
It is secured to the harbor, barely.
Some lightyears are crying down
from my firmament and I leave some behind
I'm the ghost of Jersey
the one that comes the evenings of show
Throwing at you the mist as kisses
And picking you up in his rhymes
Like the trammel of July
Where the lone wolf was glinting
The one I was seeing shine
At the fingers of sand of the earth
Remember that sea dog
That we were setting free on parole
And who barks like mad in the desert
Of wracks from some necropolis.
I'm sure that life is there
With its flannel lungs
When it cries of those weathers
The cold, all grey, which is calling us
I remember evenings over there
And sprints won over the foam
That slobber of the short-haired horses
At the level of the rocks which are wasting away
Oh the angel of lost pleasures
Oh rumor of an other habit
My desires from then on are nothing more
but a sorrow of my loneliness
And the devil of the conquered evenings
With his palenesses of rescue
And the shark of the paradises
In the environment wet with mosses
Come back green girl of the Fjords
Come back fiddle of the violin bands
In the harbor, the horns are clamoring
For the return of the comrades
Oh rare perfume of the salants
In the pepper fire of the chappings
When I was going while geometric-ing
My soul at the hollow of your wound
In the disorder of your ass
Nabbed in the sheets made of thin dawn
I was seeing one more stained glass window.
And you green girl, my spleen.
The sea shells acting a minor part
Under the broken liquid sunlights
Playing so much castanets
That it looked like Spain, livid
God of the granites have mercy
Of their vocation of finery
When the knife comes to interfere in
Their castanet figure
And I was seeing what one has a foreboding of
When we have a premonition of the glimpse
Between the shutters of the blood
And that the corpuscules represent
A blue mathematic
In that sea which is never slack
From which comes in again little by little towards me
That memory of the stars
That rumor coming from there
Under the friendly arc where I blind myself
Those hands which show off to me
Those ruminatning hands that moo
That rumor follows me for a long time
Like a beggar under the anathema
Like the shadow which loses its time
Drawing my theorem
And on my red make-up
Comes beating like a door
That rumor which goes standing
In the street filled with dead musics
It's over the sea, it's over
On the beach, the sand bleats
Like sheeps of infinite
When the shepherdess sea is calling me
I was a big ship sailing down the Garonne
Stuffed with smuggled goods and cramed with Spaniards
People who were looking were saluting the Madonna
That I had attached on the stern by the neck
One day I will go away very far in America
To give tons of gold to the Negros of cotton
I would be the thinking and poetic boat
And Bordeaux will collapse under my large pontoons
How long is the way to America
How long is the way to love
Happiness always come after sorrow
Don't worry my friend, I will be back
As the travels shape the youth
Don't worry my friend, I will grow old
Satisfy with ancient gold, bending under the tropics
One day I come back sails up front
Carrying new wheat with my cudgle hits
Alone better than a sailer I'd rape the wind
Harnesssed with Spaniards, sailing up the Garonne
I will come back home, bursting with glimmers
People would draw aside, saluting the Madonna
On the stern by the neck and of another color
How sweet is the way to Spain
How sweet is the way back
Happiness always come after sorrow
Don't worry my friend, I will come back
As the travels shape the youth
I will tell you my friend: your turn
Your turn.
Original title: "Je chante pour passer le temps"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Year: 1959
I sing to pass the time
short amount of it that I have left to live
Like you draw on the frost
Like you make your heart pleased
while throwing pebbles on the pond
I sing to pass the time
I have lived marvels during the day
You and I, remember it
And I have broken through the wall of the years
The ears full of miracles
Our universe is not the same anymore
I have lived marvels during the day
Let's have those fingers untangled now
Like the forehead from the glory
Our eyes were first to see
the clouds lower than us
And the lark at our knees
Let's have those fingers untangled now
We have made moonlights
For our palaces and our statues
What matters now that we are being killed
The nights will fall one by one
China turned itself into the Commune
We have made moonlights
And I would tell and I would tell
So much was this life adventure
Where man has become life-size
His voice above the forests
The mountains, the seas and the secrets
And I would tell and I would tell
Yes; I sing to pass the time
The bow wears out against the violin
The pebble at the game of rebounds
And how my love is touching
Near me in the leaning shadow
Yes, I sing to pass the time
I sing to pass the time
Yes to pass the time I sing
Original Title: "Est-ce ansi que les hommes vivent"
Text: Louis Aragon (1956)
Music: Léo Ferré
Year: 1961
Everything is matter of scenery
Changing of bed, changing of body
What for? As it's again
I who betrays myself
I who drags myself and lie around
And my shadow undresses itself
In the arms alike of girls
Where I believed I found a country
Light heart, changing heart, heavy heart
The time to dream is quite short
What should be done of my nights
What should be done of my days
I had nor love nor residence
Nowhere where I live or die
I was passing like the rumor
I fell asleep like the noise
Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance
It was an unreasonable weather
The deads had been put on the table
We were making sand castles
We took wolves for dogs
Everything was changing pole and shoulder
Was the play funny or not
I if I didn't hold my part well
It was because I didn't understand anything
Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance
In the Hohenzollern district
Between the Saar and the barracks
Like the lucerne's flowers
Blossomed Lola's breasts
She had a swallow's heart
On the brothel's couch
I come to lie down beside her
among the hiccups of the pianola
Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance
The sky was grey with clouds
There flew wild gooses
That were shouting death in passing
Above the houses of the quays
I saw them through the window
Their sad song entered in my being
And I thought I was recognizing
some Rainer Maria Rilke
She was brown and though pale
Her hair fell over her hips
And the week and the sunday
She opened her naked arms to everyone
She had earthenware eyes
She worked valiantly
For an artilleryman from Mainz
Who never came back from it
Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance
There are other soldiers in town
And the night the civilians go up
Put mascara on your eyelashes
Lola who will soon go away
It was in april at five o'clock
At daylight that in your heart
A dragoon plunged his knife
Is this how men live?
And their kisses follow them in the distance
With time
With the time, goes, everything goes away
We forget the face and we forget the voice
The heart, when it doesn't beat anymore, there is no point looking further
You have to let things go and it's fine
With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
The other whom we adored, we looked for under the rain
The other we were making out at the bend of a glance
between the words, between the lines and under the blusher
Of a disguised oath which goes away to sleep
With time everything vanishes
With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
Even the best memories it pulls one of those faces
like at the mall I rummage around the death's shelves
the saturday evening when the tenderness goes away on its own
With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
The other in whom we believed for a cold, for a little something
The other to whom we gave wind and jewels
For whom we'd have sold our soul for a few pennies
In front of whom we dragged like the dogs drag
With time, goes, everything goes fine.
With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
We forget about the passions and we forget the voices
that told you very low the words of the poor people
Don't come back too late, take care not to get cold
With time...
With time, goes, everything goes away
And we feel ourselves whitened like an exhausted horse
And we feel ourselves iced in a bed of fortune
And we feel ourselves alone maybe but cushy
And we feel ourselves swindled by the lost years
Then really...with time...we do not love anymore
Original Title: "Le bateau ivre"
Text: Arthur Rimbaud (1871)
Year: 1982, 1992 (Léotard's version)
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
In the furious lapping of the tides
Me, that other winter, more deaf than children's brains
I ran! And the started peninsula,
never lived more triumphing hubbub
The tempest blessed my maritime awakenings.
Lighter than a cork I dansed on the floods
named eternal rollers of victims
Ten nights, without regretting the silly eye of the lanterns
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
Sweeter than to the children the flesh of the sour apples
The green water penetrated my fir hull
And of blue wine stains and of vomits
washed me, scattered rudder and grapplings
And then, I had a bath in the poem
of the sea, instilled with stars, and milky
devouring the green azures where, wan waterlines
and delighted, a thoughtful drowned person sometimes goes down
Where suddenly dying the made blue, delirium
And slow rythms under the day's gleams
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres
ferment the biter freckles of love.
I know the skies bursting in lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the undertows, and the currents, I know the evening,
The exalted dawn like a dove people
And I've seen a few times what man thought seeing
And I've seen a few times what man thought seeing
And I've seen a few times what man thought seeing
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
I've seen the low sun, stained with mystical horrors,
Illuminating long purple freezings,
Like actors of very antique dramas.
The floods rolling their shutter's shudders in the distance
I've dreamt the green night about the dazzled snows
Kisses slowly rushing to the eyes of the seas
The circulation of the unprecedented saps
And the yellow and blue awakening of the singing phosphorus !
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
I've followed for full months, alike the nasty remarks
hysterical, the swell setting out to conquer the reefs
Without thinking that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force the muzzle to the wheezy Ocean !
I've knocked, you know, incredible Floridas
Mingling to flowers eyes of panthers with skins
Of men! Rainbows braced like bridles
Under the seas horizon, to dreary herds!
I've seen the huge swamps fermenting, creel
Where rotens in the rushes a whole Leviathan!
Collapses of water in the middle of lulls
and the faraway's toward the cataracting abysses!
Glaciers, silver suns, mother-of-pearls waves, fiery skies!
Hideous groundings at the end of the brown gulfs
where the giant snakes devoured by water sticks
cherish crooked trees with black perfumes!
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts.
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
I'd have liked to show to the children those sea breams
of the blue stream, those golden fishes, those singing fishes
Flowers' foams have cradled my departures from harbours
And ineffable wings have winged me at times.
Sometimes, martyr weary of the poles and of the zones,
the sea whose sobbing was making my rolling sweet
was coming in toward me her shadow flowers with yellow suction pads
and I was staying like a woman on her knees...
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts.
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
Peninsula, tossing on my tacks the quarrels
and the droppings of the gossiping birds with blond eyes.
And I was sailing when through my frail bounds
drowned persons came down to sleep, backwards!
Now I, lost ship under the hair of the coves
threw by the hurricane in the birdless ether
I whose the Monitors and the Hansa sailing ships
wouldn't have recovered the drunken from water skeleton
Free, smoking, riden by purple fogs
I who was making a hole through the reddening sky like a wall
who is carrying, exquisite jams to the good poets
sun lichens and azure mucus
Who was running, stained of electric half-moons
Mad plank, escorted of the black seahorses
When the july's were bringing down with cudgel hits
the ultramarine skies with burning funnels
As I was going down impassive rivers
I felt I was no more guided by the haulers
High pitched red Indians had targetted them
Having nailed them naked to the colored posts.
I was uncaring of all the crews
Carrying flemish wheats or english cotons.
When, with my hauleurs, they had finished kicking a racket
The rivers let me go down where I wanted.
I who was trembling, feeling the moans from fifty leagues
the rut of the Behemots and the thick maelstroms.
Eternal spinner of the blue immobilities
I look back at Europe with its ancient parapets.
I've seen sidereal archipelagoes and islands
whose delirious skies are opened to the sailors :
— Is it during those bottomless nights that you sleep and go into exile,
Millions of golden birds, O future vigour ?
But, true, I've cried too much! The Dawns are distressing.
Every moon is dreadful and every sun bitter :
The acrid love swelled me with intoxicating torpors.
O let my keel burst! O let me go to the sea !
If I desire a water from Europe, it's the puddle
Black and cold where toward the balmy dusk
A squatting child, full of sadness, let go
a frail ship like a butterfly of may.
I'm not bathed of your languidnesses, anymore O waves,
take away their trail to the coton carriers,
Neither crossing the pride of the flags and flames,
Nor swimming under the horrible eyes of the pontoons
